Distribution, biodiversity, and function of glass sponge reefs in the Hecate Strait, British Columbia, Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Reefs of glass sponges (Porifera, Hexactinellida) off western Canada were recently established as a marine protected area (MPA), however effective management and monitoring of this MPA is hindered by a lack of baseline data about reef distributions and biodiversity. MPA boundaries were established around reef polygons mapped using multibeam acoustics. Multibeam technology does not differentiate between live, dead, and buried portions of sponges. To ground-truth past multibeam mapping, a remote operated vehicle (ROV) was used to conduct fine-scale photographic surveys at three reef sites in the Hecate Strait, British Columbia. I performed semivariogram analyses and spatial interpolations to produce maps of reef distributions. The relationship between glass sponges and associated megafauna (> 2 cm) was analyzed from ROV images. Polygons mapped by multibeam acoustics represented the densest areas of sponge with ~10% of live and dead sponges found outside these polygons, while the remaining area was bare substrate (i.e. buried sponge or patches of mud). Glass sponges were patchily distributed in the reefs and spatially dependent at 28 to 36 meters. Although total megafauna density was significantly higher in the presence of glass sponges, glass sponges did not correlate with an increase in all taxa. Megafauna associations in the reefs occurred at a taxon-specific level and sponge reef structural complexity was found to be an important influence on reef community structure. The reefs also hosted numerous non-reef forming sponges, which until now have been previously overlooked. Molecular analyses and taxonomic classification were used to identify multiple encrusting sponges in the reefs, of which one was a new cryptic sponge in the genus Desmacella. This study garnered baseline data for Fisheries and Oceans Canada to improve their capacity for monitoring changes in the status and health of sponge reef ecosystems in Canada.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".